Favorited From the Archives: Ton’s Thoughts on Work Life Boundaries, Barriers and Attractors by Nancy White

A wonderful surprise to see a post in my feed reader discussing a posting I wrote 14 years ago. Nancy White is going through her old draft blogposts and dug this one up that has been in her drafts folder for all that time. The posting she refers to, Work Life Boundaries Barriers and Attractors, talks about things that help me create and stay in flow or obstruct my flow as a nomadic worker. Nancy draws a parallel with the past two years where those questions have become relevant for a wide new group of people. Indeed, I’ve revisited such questions myself during the pandemic.

The timing of her post is also a wonderful coincidence. Nancy and I have known eachother for a long time, despite her being on the US west coast and me in the Netherlands. We blogged about similar themes at a time that meant you’d automatically end up in conversation, and first met f2f in 2004. Since then we visited each others homes, had dinner with eachothers family and friends, and shared an increasing number of connections to other people. The wonderful coincidence here is that right as I found Nancy’s blogpost in my feedreader I had just ended a 1 hour conversation with Bev Trayner and Etienne Wenger, both close long time connections of Nancy. I talked to them about possible participation for my team in a training they regularly give, the format of which itself evolved from E’s and my very first birthday unconference that Bev attended. My 2008 blogpost that Nancy refers to discusses part of the outcomes of that unconference, as one of the sessions had been about the topic of organising one’s work effectively as a knowledge nomad.

I think that’s a wonderful way of things going full circle. Which all that time has been the title of Nancy’s blog.

Full Circle, connections for a changing world, online and off…

Nancy White